The Behaviour Change Department: Marketers need to reframe their influence to grow their power

It’s time marketers got a grip on their power.

Power isn’t a dirty word. It is table stakes for achieving anything. And marketers do wield considerable power so why isn’t marketing more influential in your organisation?

Maybe you have something to do with it.

Right now the most powerful people in our industry (the CMOs) are, on average, becoming less powerful in the boardroom. They have less to spend, shorter tenures and feel more disempowered than ever before.

One reason for this is we ‘self-subjugate’ ourselves and make our influence sound small. To earn more of a presence in the boardroom, our received wisdom is to position marketing as simply ‘the voice of the consumer’.

But this is flawed as powerful people are not messengers, they are change agents – and we need to be more than just passive professional ear wiggers.

Another way we lose power is we confuse the means with the ends.

Our industry is guilty of navel gazing. Our marketing is a means not an end. Our tech stacks are means not ends. Whether it’s our AI, our loyalty strategy, our great brand experiences, our digital transformation or our innovation … all of it is pointless unless it changes behaviour.

Three steps to thinking more like a behavioural scientistWe look weak when we brag about our tools and not what we effect. We look obsessed by our craft rather than thirsty for impact. Many marketers would rather believe their job is to make inspiring activations over shaping populations, perhaps it feels more wholesome, but inspiration that doesn’t get action is noise. If I were to modernise the David Ogilvy quote: ‘We change behaviour… or else’.

When we accept we are here to change behaviour, we can wield it for good.

The reality is our power to influence is huge and we should hold that power.

At the touch of a button, we can make thousands go out to vote, head to the gym, book the theatre, develop rituals, recycle, buy flights – we have the skillset to move populations. This level of capability should put us in the CEO’s inner circle, but instead we often remain coldly outside clutching our crayons.

So, the question becomes, how does a capability become more influential in its organisation? The good news is that it starts with how our thoughts and our actions shape our reputation. As a priority we need to start by making marketing feel powerful again by focusing on our behaviour change potential.

To do that, we all need to get comfortable with our power and not squirm like it’s a dirty word. Power is table stakes for having impact in an organisation so this column will share ways that marketers can change their behaviour to become more influential in their organisations.

Choose your metaphors with care – they are more powerful than you thinkWhile the click-baiter class peddle quick fixes like mastering body language or perfecting your handshake, these tactics are unlikely to have a lasting impact.

Instead, I’ll share stories from influential people at big brands who have increased their power by doing and framing marketing in ways that command respect from the board. By understanding these strategies, you can not only elevate your team’s influence but also transform marketing’s role within your organization.

Because with great power, comes great profitability.

Lesson 1: Power doesn’t have to be overt to work

Not all your change has to be visible.

Wahaca, the vibey Mexican restaurant, has had sustainability at the heart of their brand since day one, but they had a behaviour-change gap when it came to their diners.

Their approach to encourage guests to choose meals that are better for the planet has centred on delicious sounding small plates that just so happen to be lower carbon, because when you’re choosing what to eat, taste is king. In a survey of 1,308 of their guests they learnt taste was the most important factor, carbon the least.

If marketing was merely to be the voice of the customer then a finding like this could spell the end of any brand’s environmental aspirations. Wahaca’s marketing team tried the conventional route of nudging its customers about the climate impact of the dishes they chose – but it didn’t have any impact on behaviour.

“Back in 2022, when it became mandatory for us to put calories on the menus, we responded by adding the carbon footprint of each dish too. Press coverage followed and our guests responded positively, but we had no standout swing towards planet friendly food choices,” Ed Latham, marketing director at Wahaca, told me. “Diners continued to choose our lively and vibrant social eating space to connect and have a good time. We knew it started a conversation among our guests, but our rational route wasn’t having the impact.”

Rather than accept this wasn’t a pressing issue for the customer, Wahaca tried a different tack.

When the carbon impact of food was introduced into the dish development equation, the change happened behind the scenes. The team had the knowledge to develop planet-positive dishes. Controversially steak came off the menu. Enter the Beef Gringa tacos, tender, slow-cooked British regenerative beef, which had outstanding guest feedback, were enormously more sustainable and are now their best selling taco.

The greenhouse gas emissions associated dropped from 2.9kgs per taco to 1.4kgs.

No diner had to be educated or guilted into changing their minds. New, better choices were put forward. No polarising political views were aired. They avoided all the pitfalls to sustainability marketing. The planet won, the business thrived and the guest had a better time.

What was learned

When a team sees themselves as the behaviour change department over the marketing department we make powerful change. When our story to the board is behaviour change results before ‘brand iconography’ we look like the business’s secret weapon. We don’t default to changing minds, we get on with changing behaviours.

As with Wahaca, influencing the nation doesn’t always take a campaign, it takes intelligence and imagination at the heart of the business, to make small changes that nobody would ever see.

When we understand our power and how to communicate it to the board we reclaim our rightful place as powerful agents of change within the organization.